At 09:36 10/09/04, you wrote:
>Hi all!
>
>I have now started the research on the iHP-120 we purchased yesterday, but
>we haven't made that much progress yet. I have scanned the PCB:s and added
>some information to the Rockbox wiki.
>
>However, there is one problem: The hardware is hard to reverse engineer by
>multimeter inspection only, since the CPU and flash are BGA packages,
>effectively hiding the pads. We need to unsolder the CPU to be able to
>trace the signals and draw schematics, but this will very likely render
>the player useless in the process, as it is very difficult to put the CPU back.
>
>This is our call for help:
>
>If anyone has a broken iHP-1xx to donate to the project, we would be ever
>so grateful!!!!
>
>Please contact me if you have one.
>
>(OK, there are other ways of reverse engineering the hardware, like logic
>analysis, BDM debugging etc. It is also very likely that the design is
>based on the reference design from Motorola. But tracing the PCB with a
>multimeter will certainly make it a lot easier.)
>
>Linus

Also, most electronics companies have an X-ray machine for checking BGA
joints - this is one other alternative, but useful only if you have access
to the machine.